


Driving in the Rain Through the Woods at Night

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Black Dogs, Gen, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 03:12:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16462256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: Driving down back roads through the woods late at night is always unnerving. When it's raining so hard that everything's just a blur it's even worse. The miles drag on, the minutes blend together and all you want to do is get back on the main roads where you at least know where you are.





	Driving in the Rain Through the Woods at Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/gifts).



The rain was pouring down in sheets. Until tonight Mark never known what that expression even meant, but this was some of the absolute worst weather he’d ever seen and he was driving through it.

The wipers were going as fast as they could and it was still impossible to see what was in front of the car. Sheryl was leaning forward in the passenger seat, peering out into the darkness, trying to catch a glimpse of the turn they were supposed to take to get back to the main road.

“We turn left after the bridge,” she repeated for the dozenth time.

He reached forward to wipe the fog from the inside of the windshield, “Right.”

“Right?” she sounded panicked, “There was a right turn that we passed.”

“Right that we turn left after the bridge,” he reassured, glancing down at the odometer and doing a quick bit of math. Ten miles down the narrow, twisty road through the woods where Janine lived, to the fork in the road, three miles since they took the first left turn, and they’d gone seven since then so maybe another eight to the bridge.

In clear weather it wouldn’t have been a problem, but in this he was driving blind and going so slow that keeping track of distance was impossible. Every time he checked to see how far they’d gone he was surprised by how little distance they’d covered. The trip home was going to take at least twice as much time as getting there had.

“What was that?” Sheryl tapped leaned farther forward, nose nearly against the glass, “I saw something!”

“The bridge?” he squinted into the darkness.

“Stop! Turn back!” she started to roll down her window, a gust of wind that managed to get through the trees rocking the car and driving rain in on them.

“What?” he slammed on the breaks, “What was it?”

“A dog!” She was frantic, leaning out the window, “Sitting by the side of the road, we’ve got to go back for it. The poor thing’s probably lost and half drowned.”

“There’s no way you saw a dog through all this,” he said, even as he threw the car into reverse. With how muddy it was there was no way he was going to try turning around and risk going off the road, especially when there was so much water on the road it was hard to tell where it ended and the dirt alongside it began.

“Keep going,” she urged, hand on the door latch, “I saw him somewhere around here.”

“What color was he?” Mark asked, hoping to spot the animal, or better yet, not see it so they could continue on.

“Black,” Sheryl said firmly, “A big, shaggy, black dog.”

He stopped the car, “There’s no way you saw a black dog in the rain. It was a bush.”

“Maybe,” Sheryl admitted sullenly, leaning out the window and staring into the darkness behind them, “But we should look anyway.”

“Not in this rain,” he sighed and started forward, “Besides, we’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s no way a dog would be out here.”

“Maybe he’s lost,” she offered.

“No dog in its right mind would be out in this weather.”

The drive continued in silence after that.

Wavery shadows and silvery curtains of rain were all he could see in the headlights.

They had to be getting close, any minute now the bridge would appear.

Sure enough, in a lull in the rain he caught sight of a set of sharp angles standing out against the softer shapes of the trees around them. They’d made it to the bridge.

Even better, the rain was letting up.

“Let’s go!” he laughed, glad to be done with that adventure, “And next time one of your friends from work is having a party if the weather’s like this we’re sitting it out.”

Bringing the car up so a more reasonable speed he thought over how, as miserable as the trip was, it would certainly make a good story later, the house in the middle of the woods, the crazy ride, the imaginary dog, all of it was the sort of material that stories were made of.

Then he saw it.

Sheryl’s dog.

The thing was so black that the night looked grey around it and its eyes – when he first saw them he’d thought that he was looking into the headlights of a car coming straight at them, they were that large and shone so brightly.

For the second time that night he stomped on the breaks, but on the rain-slick road it wasn’t enough. There was no way that they’d miss the dog and it was big enough that it would bounce over the hood and go straight through the windshield, if it didn’t total the car first.

The dog was so impossibly big that its eyes were level with his own, looking more like a shaggy pony than a dog, but it was unmistakably a dog.

Sheryl screamed.

He turned the wheel, felt the tires start to slip and the next thing he knew the car was stopped and rain was falling in on him through the broken driver’s side window.

“Are you okay?” he gasped, wondering for a moment why there was a handkerchief draped across the steering wheel. Unthinkingly, he tried to pull it away, maybe wipe the water out of his eyes with it, but it was attached.

The airbag, they’d hit something and the airbag had…, “Sheryl, are you okay?”

“I think,” she was hyperventilating, her hair plastered to her forehead by rain from earlier, “I think I’m okay. Are you okay?”

“I think,” things had come into focus enough to see that they’d run into a tree, a small one that was broken across the hood of the car, obscuring everything with leaves.

His seatbelt was stuck and it took his several tries to free himself while Sheryl fumbled with her door until it came open.

“I’ll see if I can flag someone down for help,” she said shakily.

He nodded, trying not to think about how they hadn’t seen anyone else on the road that night. Not in this weather.

The seatbelt clicked free and he went out to take stock of the damage.

The car was totaled. They’d have to wait for a ride and then maybe a tow truck would come for the car in the morning, not that that it would do any good.

Fucking dog, running across the road and –”

Sheryl’s scream stopped him mid thought.

Running to the road he found her, kneeling and looking out at the bridge, pointing.

“The bridge, oh god the bridge,” she sobbed, “We would have…”

The bridge had been washed out.

If they’d kept going they would have driven straight into the river, which, thanks to all the rain had risen several feet from when they’d driven over the bridge earlier that night.

**Author's Note:**

> Black dogs take many forms in the myths they feature it, monsters, protectors, omens.


End file.
